SKM 2023 – scientific programme

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CPP: Fachverband Chemische Physik und Polymerphysik

CPP 21: Active Matter III (joint session BP/CPP/DY)

CPP 21.3: Talk

Tuesday, March 28, 2023, 10:00–10:15, TOE 317

Run with the Brownian Hare, Hunt with the Deterministic Hounds — •Davide Bernardi¹ and Benjamin Lindner^{2, 3} — ¹Italian Institute of Technology, Ferrara, Italy — ²Bernstein Center for Computational Neuroscience, Berlin, Germany — ³Institut für Physik, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin

Pursuit and evasion are vital to most animal species and play an important role in many human activities. Traditionally, chase-and-escape models have been studied in the framework of game theory, or in detailed models that can be studied only through numerical simulations and that lack generalization power.

Here, we present analytic results for the mean time and energy used by a pack of deterministic hounds to capture a prey that undergoes Brownian diffusion. Depending on the number of chasers, we find that the mean capture time as a function of the prey's diffusion coefficient can be monotonically increasing, decreasing, or attain a minimum at a finite value. Furthermore, an optimal speed and number of chasing hounds exist, that depend on the baseline power consumption and drag coefficient of each chaser.

The present model can be seen as an analytically tractable basis for the theoretician's perspective on the growing field of smart microswimmers and autonomous robots.